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The UN mediator Lakhdar Brahimi has apologised to the Syrian people after peace talks in Geneva ended without making progress. He had held final discussions with both sides in Geneva in a last-ditch bid to break the stalemate between the Syrian government and opposition. Mr Brahimi said a key sticking point was the government's refusal to talk about a transitional governing body. No date has been set for a third round of talks. The UK and France have blamed President Assad's government for the failure of the talks. The conflict in Syria has claimed more than 100,000 lives since March...

"My time in the Obama administration turned out to be a deeply disillusioning experience." It was close to midnight on Jan. 20, 2009, and I was about to go to sleep when my iPhone beeped. There was a new text message. It was from Richard Holbrooke. It said, "Are you up, can you talk?" When I called, he told me that Barack Obama had asked him to serve as envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. He would work out of the State Department, and he wanted me to join his team. "No one knows this yet. Don't tell anyone. Well, maybe...

The situation in Syria is "extremely bad and getting worse", UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has said. He spoke after briefing the Security Council about his first trip to Syria since taking the post on 1 September. Mr Brahimi said he would return soon, but admitted he did not have a full plan on how to bring peace to Syria. The statement comes as violence continues across the country. Activists said the government was bombing parts of the second city, Aleppo. Speaking at UN headquarters in New York, Mr Brahimi said: "There is no disagreement anywhere that the situation in Syria...

OPERATION: ENDURING FREEDOM Taliban hunting an American? Opposition leader executed reportedly accompanied by U.S. agent By Toby Westerman © 2001 WorldNetDaily.com At the same time some 1,500 opponents of the Taliban – warriors and holy men – gathered in Peshawar, Pakistan, to lay plans for the next Afghan government, Taliban fighters located and killed one of their most influential opponents – and may be hunting for an American reported to have accompanied him. Abdul Haq, a well-known hero of the anti-Soviet guerrilla war and long-standing opponent of the Taliban, was found south of the Afghan capital, Kabul, captured and then killed, ...

UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said today that Iraqi nuclear scientist Hussain al-Shahristani doesn't want a top job in new interim government. Al-Shahristani, a Shi'ite Muslim who was jailed under Saddam Hussein's regime, was identified as a leading contender for prime minister. Brahimi, who is in Baghdad helping Iraqis agree on an interim government that will take over June 30, said he met al-Shahristani and thinks highly of him, his spokesman Ahmed Fawzi said in a statement. Brahimi "has no doubt that Mr Shahristani could serve his country well in a number of positions in government", the statement said. "Mr Shahristani,...

BAGHDAD, June 22 (KUNA) -- A special panel charged with dissolving the ousted ruling Baath Party and its remnants said Wednesday that reported meetings between UN envoy Lakhdar Al-Ibrahimi and some insurgency groups were held without knowledge or participation of the elected Iraqi government. A statement issued by the committee said representatives of these groups called, during these shadow meetings, for re-allowing the Baath Party to re-activate itself and re-group its ranks.

...In letters to President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, Mr. Annan wrote that, "I wish to share with you my increasing concern at the prospect of an escalation in violence, which I fear could be very disruptive for Iraq's political transition...." How nice of Mr. Annan to express such fine impartiality between Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the Americans and Iraqis the terrorist and his gang are trying to kill. The insurgents are using Fallujah and environs as a staging area for their violence, dispatching suicide car bombers, kidnapping and beheading innocent tourists...

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan welcomed Iraq "back into the family of independent and sovereign nations" Monday and called on all Iraqis to assist the new, interim government. The U.N. Security Council also welcomed the handover of power and the official end of the American and British occupation and reaffirmed "the independence, sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of Iraq." Annan's top adviser on Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, said the "former occupying powers" and the new government must now demonstrate to the Iraqi people that the 150,000 foreign troops in the country are there to support the government in maintaining security — and...

Bremer the 'dictator' of Iraq – UN envoy UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi on Wednesday responded to criticism of US involvement in the nomination of the new Iraqi government by stressing Washington was still the dominant force in the country. "I would remind you the Americans are governing the country so their point of view was certainly taken into consideration," he said at a news conference. "He has the money, ..the signature" "I don't think he'd mind my saying this: Bremer is the dictator of Iraq. He has the money, he has the signature," said Brahimi after stressing he had...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraqi Governing Council members accused American officials Monday of pressuring them to accept Washington's choice for Iraq's new president, prompting a delay in the announcement of a new government to take power from the U.S.-led coalition June 30. U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi had hoped to complete the selection of the 26-member Cabinet by Monday. However, a Governing Council session that was to have chosen a president was postponed until at least Tuesday, with sharp differences remaining between the council and the coalition over the largely ceremonial head of state job. "I hope it will be taken...

The Bush administration's agreement for Lakhdar Brahimi, U.N. special envoy to Iraq, to choose the next interim Iraqi government could signal the end of U.S. efforts to establish democracy in Iraq, says Geostrategy-Direct, the global intelligence news service. The appointment appears to be part of a scenario in which the United States plans to order troops home after a general election in Iraq by the end of the year. Under this scenario, Iraq will have had its election, the United States will have declared victory and the only losers may be those who hope for Iraqi and Arab democracy. "The...

May 27, 2004, 9:32 a.m. Spinning Out of Control Iraqis are frustrated with the CPA. By Mahdi Bassam The Coalition Provisional Authority will cease to exist in less than six weeks. Its administrator L. Paul Bremer will return home; many Iraqis hope he will not return to their country. U.S. government officials say the "Bremer-Brahimi-Blackwell" plan may be unveiled within a week. Its general outlines have already become clear. It is headed for failure. The choice of a Sunni Arab nationalist to appoint an interim government is misguided. While undersecretary of the Arab League between 1984 and 1991, Brahimi remained...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Iraqi Governing Council on Friday nominated one of its own members, Iyad Allawi, a Shiite Muslim physician who spent years in exile, to become prime minister of the new government to take power June 30, members said. The chief U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, was at Friday's council session and congratulated Allawi on his nomination, said Mustafa al-Marayati, an aide to council member Raja Habib al-Khuzaai. The council also planned to nominate a president and two vice presidents. But it was not known whether U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has approved the choices. Brahimi has...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iyad Allawi, a member of Iraq (news - web sites)'s Governing Council with long-time links to the CIA (news - web sites), has been chosen as prime minister of Iraq's interim government, an aide to Allawi, Hany Adris, told Reuters Friday. "There was a meeting Governing Council and Dr. Allawi was unanimously chosen as prime minister," Adris said, adding that U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi and the U.S.-run occupation authority in Iraq had endorsed that choice. Other Governing Council sources confirmed the selection. Allawi is a wealthy secular Shi'ite and former member of Saddam Hussein (news - web...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi and Paul Bremer, the top U.S. official in Iraq, have agreed on the nomination of Iyad Allawi as prime minister of a new Iraqi government, a member of the Governing Council said Friday. Mahmoud Othman said Bremer and Brahimi had agreed to the council's choice of Allawi, a Governing Council member with long-time links to the CIA, as prime minister in the post-June 30 government. "We had a meeting with Bremer and Brahimi and they both agreed and congratulated him and were happy about it," Othman told Reuters.

U.S., U.N. Blindsided on Iraq PM Announcement 1 hour, 55 minutes ago Add World - Reuters to My Yahoo! By Caren Bohan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When word surfaced in Baghdad on Friday that Iyad Allawi would lead Iraq's interim government, confusion reigned both in Washington and at the United Nations, despite President Bush's assurances of an orderly handover. For weeks, the Bush administration has described the selection of the interim government as a process that was being spearheaded by U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi in consultation with the United States and Iraqis. Bush, in a major address on Monday, laid out...

WASHINGTON: William Safire The three factions controlling Iraq - long suspicious of one another - are now on the brink of open tribal warfare. Not the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds - I mean the Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA. The spark setting off this U.S. bureaucratic conflagration is the former Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi, a sophisticated, secular Shiite who organized resistance to the Sunni despot Saddam Hussein before it was popular. Since 1996, the CIA has hated him with a passion. In that year, American spooks egged on Iraqi officers to overthrow Saddam. Chalabi claims to have warned...

(Washington, D.C.): Ahmed Chalabi has suddenly become a kind of Arabian piñata, presented to the world as everything from a con-man, felon and liar to the man who singlehandedly duped the U.S. government into invading Iraq on the basis of fraudulent intelligence and promises of a flower-strewn cake-walk. To the extent the Bush Administration is contributing to this transparent effort to find a scapegoat for its increasingly troubled Iraq policy - presumably, in the hope of improving the President’s sagging popularity here at home - it has made not only an epic strategic mistake, but a potentially costly political one,...

A Shia nuclear scientist said to be close to Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is emerging as one of the frontrunners to become the new prime minister of Iraq. Hussain Shahristani spent a decade in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison for defying former dictator Saddam Hussein's command to turn his scientific expertise to the development of nuclear weapons. Lakhdar Brahimi, United Nations special envoy, and Robert Blackwill, a Bush administration official, are still finalising the composition of the new Iraqi government. Officials say that balancing the communal, religious and ethnic groups within the new government is proving difficult and fluid, and caution that...

Baghdad - Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmed Chalabi, who has recently fallen out with the US-led coalition, said on Tuesday a UN role in shaping a sovereign Iraqi government after June 30 would be "dangerous". "The envoy of the UN secretary general is organising a national conference to choose a consultative council. This is a dangerous idea that provokes instability," an emotional Chalabi told reporters here. "Iraq is not Afghanistan and we do not need a Loya Jirga" he said, referring to the tribal assembly that shaped the Afghan government after the end of the US-led war to oust the...